Participants: Tom Shepherd & Deyvy Rodriguez
Series Code: PBOTB
Program Code: PBOTB00020A
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00:20 Hello and welcome to Books of the Book.
00:22 My name is Deyvy Rodriguez and I'm very happy that you're with 00:25 us to join us in this Bible study. Dr. Shepherd, 00:29 Tom Shepherd, is with us from Andrews University. He's a 00:33 Professor of New Testament interpretation and he is here 00:36 with us to help us study on the books of 1 and 2 Peter. 00:39 Right now we are on the first chapter of the book of 2 Peter 00:44 again and we're starting off in verse 16. Dr. Shepherd, why 00:49 does Peter begin with a disclaimer in this verse? 00:55 This verse, in verse 16, he says "For we did not follow cleverly 00:59 devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of 01:02 our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eye witnesses of his 01:05 majesty. " It's always interesting when somebody starts 01:09 with a disclaimer. If you came home and you said, You know I 01:14 wasn't driving fast down main street this evening. Everybody 01:18 knows there's some kind of story that you have to tell. Because 01:23 maybe you met somebody with a red light on his car and he 01:27 thought that you were driving fast down main street and you 01:31 might even have a little souvenir to show for that. 01:34 So the disclaimer points to something behind it, some story 01:39 behind it. So when Peter says we weren't following cunningly 01:44 devised myths, well then obviously there was somebody who 01:49 said they were following these cunningly devised myths and 01:53 that's exactly what our whole passage is about and the whole 01:57 book is about because Peter is fighting with false teachers. 02:00 What are these false teachers doing? They're trying to 02:03 undermine the authority of the apostles. And how do they do 02:07 that? They say, Aw these people you know, they are just making 02:12 things up. They made up these stories and came to these 02:16 conclusions. You can't trust those people. 02:18 They're untrustworthy. So he has to defend his apostleship. 02:24 He has to defend his ability to teach the people. 02:29 So he's really saying, Hey we're not the ones listening to these 02:32 cunning tales or stories. The others are the ones that have 02:37 come up with that. 02:38 Yeah. I suppose that you could say that different people are 02:41 arguing in terms of who's the false one here and the false 02:44 teachers that Peter has pinpointed in these chapters are 02:47 saying that he's the false prophet, that he's the one 02:51 that you shouldn't trust. 02:53 What topic is Peter talking about here in verse 16. He says 02:59 and the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Yeah, it 03:03 seems he's talking about the second coming because we know 03:08 that Jesus is coming in power and glory. 03:10 Yeah, you just read this and you'd think automatically that 03:13 he was talking about the second coming. We know that the second 03:16 coming is a topic that he will delve into in Chapter 3 and so 03:20 we get that feeling. But then he says, But we were eye 03:23 witnesses of his majesty. So it seems like it can't be the 03:27 second coming that he's talking about because of course we 03:30 haven't been eye witnesses of Jesus' second coming yet. So we 03:34 keep reading and we read verse 17. We're actually reading 03:38 2 Peter 1 verses 16-21 as our topic or passage for this time. 03:43 In verse 17 he says, For when he received honor and glory from 03:47 God the Father and the voice was born to him by the majestic Lord 03:51 This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased. Verse 18, We 03:56 ourselves heard this very voice born from heaven for we were 04:00 with him on the holy mountain. So what does that make you think 04:04 of? The transfiguration? 04:06 Yes. Because Peter was as a witness 04:09 he saw this transfiguration of Jesus. 04:12 Yeah. This is before Jesus goes to Jerusalem and he takes three 04:16 of his disciples, Peter, James and John, and they go up on a 04:20 mountain alone. The other nine are left down below and they go 04:24 up on the mountain. This is reported in Matthew, Mark and 04:28 Luke. If you're interested, sometime you can look. We don't 04:30 have time to go into all this. We have so many things to cover 04:36 in this particular presentation today. But he goes to Matthew 16 04:41 is where it's found, Mark chapter 9 and Luke chapter 9. 04:44 All three of these have the story of Jesus going up on the 04:49 mountain. He mentions in each of these presentations in the 04:55 Gospels three are mentioned in each: There's someone standing 05:00 there seeing this and people experiencing it. Jesus says, 05:04 there are some standing here, before he goes up on the 05:09 mountain he says this there, some standing here. He also says 05:13 They won't taste death, some standing here who will not taste 05:16 death till they see the kingdom of God coming in power or coming 05:20 in glory. Okay. So the three things that are there: some are 05:24 standing here, they won't taste death until they see the kingdom 05:29 of God. Now each of the gospels adds particular little extra 05:33 information. Matthew says the Son of Man, Marks refers to the 05:38 coming in power and Luke simply says the kingdom of God. So it's 05:42 interesting that he says till they see the kingdom of God 05:45 and one of them says kingdom of God coming in power. That makes 05:49 you think of his second coming. But the very next story that is 05:54 referred to is the transfiguration. 05:55 Right. When we look at all of this and we look at what Peter 06:00 says, the way best to explain all this is that the 06:04 transfiguration in some way prefigures the second coming of 06:10 Jesus. The transfiguration in some way prefigures the second 06:14 coming of Jesus. So Peter is stressing the veracity of his 06:19 past experience of the transfiguration to affirm trust 06:23 in what he will say about the future second coming of Jesus. 06:27 So he talks about the past; we were eye witnesses there, and he 06:32 emphasizes that he was eye witness and there are two things 06:36 that they tend to focus on, the visual aspects of the 06:39 transfiguration and the auditory aspects of the transfiguration, 06:43 what they saw and what they heard. 06:45 And they cannot deny that because they saw it. 06:49 Yeah. The personal experience when you have an experience and 06:53 you go someplace and you say, And I was there and I saw it 06:57 myself. I heard with my own ears what he said. That becomes a 07:02 very powerful testimony. So Peter is countering the attacks 07:05 of these false teachers who are going to attack the second 07:09 coming of Jesus and what does he use to do so? He uses this whole 07:13 presentation about the transfiguration as an eye 07:18 witness account of that experience supporting his 07:23 apostleship. Okay. Verse 17 says, For he 07:26 received from God the Father honor and glory when such a 07:29 voice came to him from the Excellent Glory, This is my 07:32 beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. 07:35 What does this verse present? 07:37 Well, this is that presentation of the transfiguration of Jesus 07:42 and we've said it before that there is something going on here 07:47 that we would call a theophany, the appearance of God, when God 07:50 appears and it has pretty much those characteristics that we've 07:54 already referred to before. I'll mention them again. 07:57 Five characteristics of a theophany: The divine glory 08:01 appears, of course on the mountain Jesus is in this 08:05 wonderful glory. Human fear, and of course that's very obvious 08:09 too; they're shaking in their boots and they all kneel down 08:13 kind of. They're all worried like this is the end of their 08:17 lived. The command, Don't be afraid; interestingly that 08:20 doesn't show up in this story so much, don't be afraid. 08:23 A revelation from God. Of course here's the revelation where it 08:27 said, This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased, listen 08:32 to him. And then the human response to the revelation and 08:35 the response to the revelation, the disciples are wondering 08:39 about it. They start asking Jesus questions about it. 08:42 What does this mean? And he gives them more instruction 08:45 about how they're supposed to keep quiet about that. But that 08:48 is a typical theophany, a typical revelation of God and 08:53 confirming to them that Jesus is the Messiah. 08:56 Verse 19: And so we have the prophetic word confirmed which 09:00 you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place 09:04 until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your 09:08 hearts. In this verse is the prophetic word or the word of 09:12 prophecy more sure or made more sure? 09:15 Yeah. Now if you look at this passage in the King James 09:19 Version it'll say, And we have the more sure word of prophecy. 09:23 And my version, which is the New King James, says the prophetic 09:28 word confirmed. Yeah. Here's the English 09:30 Standard Version which interestingly goes with the King 09:33 James. And we have something more sure, the prophetic word 09:37 to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining 09:40 in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star 09:43 rises in your heart. So we have two different ways that this has 09:47 been translated by the different people. Is it the more sure word 09:51 of prophecy, that is, something more sure than the personal 09:55 experience of the transfiguration or 09:57 is it that the transfiguration now makes the prophetic word 10:02 more sure; we have the prophetic word confirmed, okay, is the way 10:06 the New King James puts it. This is actually an interesting 10:10 question of Greek translation and it's a little bit 10:13 complicated. It has to do with the use of an adjective. 10:16 The adjective is more sure. There are two different ways you 10:21 can use adjectives in Greek and it's a little complicated with 10:25 the word and where's the word the and where does the adjective 10:29 stand and all kinds of things like that but if anybody's 10:33 interested in looking into this in more detail it has to do with 10:36 what's called the predicate position or the attributive 10:39 position of the adjective and the attributive position of the 10:44 adjective you would translate as the more sure word. Okay. 10:49 If it's in the predicate position you would have it 10:52 translated as the prophetic word made more sure. Well it's quite 10:58 clear actually in Greek that this adjective is in the 11:01 predicate position. So your translation in the King James 11:05 there, the New King James, it says we have the prophetic word 11:08 confirmed or we have the prophetic word made more sure 11:11 as some translations may put it. That's probably the more 11:14 accurate way to translate this. Well that immediately gets some 11:18 people concerned because they say, Wait a minute. Are you 11:24 saying then that the personal testimony of the personal 11:30 experience is more important that the scriptures? Won't that 11:36 take you down a very bad road if you think in those kind of 11:41 ways that the prophetic word is not as good as the personal 11:47 testimony or the personal experience. Well the answer 11:51 I give to that is: To start off with, how does Peter describe 11:56 the prophecies? How does he describe the word of God. 11:59 He says we have the prophetic word made more sure. Now think 12:07 about that adjective as one word in Greek, but more sure. What 12:14 does that mean, more sure? 12:17 It almost implies that at one point it wasn't so sure but now 12:22 it's more. It was sure before, but now it's 12:28 more sure. It's better. 12:30 Better, yeah. It's made better than it was, okay. So Peter 12:34 is not saying that the prophetic word is unreliable; it's the 12:39 sure word of prophecy. But there's something that makes 12:44 that word of prophecy more sure for my personal life and that's 12:53 when I have a personal experience of that word of 12:56 prophecy. Peter went through the experience of the 12:59 transfiguration and that confirmed, as your translation 13:04 says, that confirmed to him what the scriptures had already said 13:10 long ago. But when he read it, it didn't have the same power, 13:15 but when he went through the personal experience suddenly it 13:20 came alive and had much greater meaning to him. As I said before 13:25 on one of these programs about the experience my wife and I 13:28 went through in 1997 and we found that the promises of the 13:32 Bible were a wonderful support to us in that time of trouble. 13:36 Well promises start to make more meaning to you when you find 13:40 them sure and true because you went through an experience like 13:44 that. Well, Dr. Shepherd, indeed I 13:46 believe also that it is my personal experience with the 13:51 Lord Jesus Christ that will make the scriptures more powerful 13:55 to me. We'll continue with the study of 2 Peter after this 13:59 short break. |
Revised 2014-12-17